Dear Oma has been in the hospital since Thursday, May 31st and during that time there has been a lot of confusion about her health status and what is going on in the hospital. This blog is to help clarify what has happened so far and to also provide accurate, up to date information for her family and other loved ones. I asked Oma's permission first and she gave me the go ahead to put this information out there so if you know anyone who would like to follow this blog please share the link with them. If you have any questions just put them in the comment section and I will try to answer them as best I can. I'll tell the story up until this point in chronological order. I'll make a new blog post for each day so they are a little shorter in length.
Starting on Tuesday Oma started feeling sick, she was vomitting and having back pain. This continued into Wednesday when she developed a fever. Mentally she was having a little bit of a hard time but still seemed her usual self, just not feeling well. She took some Tyelnol and went to bed Wednesday night. Thursday morning she was able to get up and walk around a little bit in the morning, but in the afternoon her daily helper called uncle Val to let him know Oma wasn't doing well at all and might need to go to the hospital. Val wasn't able to leave his store at that time and asked Phillip if he could check on Oma. As soon as he got to her Phillip called me, Rachael, and said we needed to get Oma to the hospital as quick as possible. By the time I got to the house Phillip had carried Oma out to his car as she was too weak to walk. She was also having a harder time communicating and understanding questions. She could recognize us though at this point.
When we got to the IHC ER her blood pressure (BP) was a little low but stable, about 105/50 (normal is about 110/70 give or take about 10 points on both top and bottom numbers). She was running a fever with a temperature of 102.9 and felt burning hot to the touch. By the time we got back in an ER room and the nurse could check her BP again it had dropped to about 79/45 and Oma's mental status had dropped a bit, she was having more trouble talking and it sounded like she had marbles in her mouth. Klint and Val both arrived shortly after Oma got settled into her room. The nurses quickly started giving Oma fluids into her IV to help hydrate her and increase her BP. This worked at first and she looked a bit better.
They checked some blood work and got a urine sample and did a scan of her brain to check for stroke as well as a chest x-ray to check for pneumonia. Her brain scan showed that she hadn't had a stroke, she didn't have pneumonia, and her labs were mostly normal although her kidneys looked like they were having a hard time (probably severe dehydration) and her urine sample showed she had a Urinary Tract Infection (UTI). Oma had a dose of antibiotics in the ER. Her blood pressure started dropping again and it looked like the UTI had spread to her blood stream (called Bacteremia) and she was actually going into what's called Septic Shock, meaning that the infection was so bad her entired body system was going into shock.
They tried giving more fluids to bring her BP back up and this time it remained low. Oma's mental status started dropping again as she was transported up to the ICU. When she arrived there she wasn't answering questions and couldn't follow commands. The ICU staff put what's called an Arterial Line into the artery on the inside of her wrist to more accurately monitor her blood pressure and found that it had dropped to 65/35- VERY LOW! Her pulses were very weak. This is mailnly because the Sepsis was causing all of her arteries to dilate and lower the BP and so she wasn't perfusing well. Think of like the difference in pressure it would take to push the same amount of fluid from a small straw versus a hose. This means that her organs and tissues weren't getting the blood flow and oxygen needed to work properly. When we left the hospital late that night her blood pressures was 55/30 and the ICU doctors were putting a large catheter into Oma's internal jugal on the side of her neck to be able to push more fluids into her veins faster as well as give medications called "Pressors" to increase her blood pressure. The medication was called Levophed. Oma was very, very sick.
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